Romney's foreign controversies overshadow economic message

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney and his wife Ann meet people on the street before his meeting with Poland's Prime Minister Donald Tusk at the Old Town Hall in Gdansk, Poland, July 30, 2012.Jason Reed

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican Mitt Romney's campaign tried to keep the domestic political focus on the U.S. economy and jobs on Monday, although the effort was overshadowed by more controversy from a foreign trip after he made remarks that upset Palestinians.

Hoping to take advantage of President Barack Obama's "you didn't build that" comment, Romney's campaign sent teams of high-profile supporters to 18 events in a dozen swing states to hammer home its message that Obama is an anti-business lover of big government.

One-time Republican presidential rivals Newt Gingrich and Tim Pawlenty, who is now a vice presidential possibility, were among the Romney supporters who fanned out across the country to push attacks on Obama for saying, "If you own a business, you didn't build that."

But Romney was forced to fight off his own controversy after he called Jerusalem the Israeli capital and said later that differences in culture powered Israel's economic success compared with the Palestinians.

Both comments angered Palestinian leaders, just days after Romney annoyed Britons during a stop in London by questioning their readiness to host the Olympic Games.

Romney pointed to the big difference in wealth between Israel and the Palestinians and suggested Israel's culture was the reason for the gap.

"If you could learn anything from the economic history of the world, it's this: culture makes all the difference," he told a fundraising event in Jerusalem.

He added, "Everyone knows that the Palestinians cannot reach their full potential given the Israeli restrictions imposed on them."

It was another bumpy day on an international trip aimed at showing U.S. voters that the former governor of Massachusetts can handle foreign policy, an area where his election rival Obama has a lead in opinion polls.

"He's been fumbling the foreign policy football from country to country. And there's a threshold question that he has to answer to the American people, and that's whether he is prepared to be commander in chief," Obama campaign spokeswoman Jen Psaki said on Air Force One.

Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney delivers foreign policy remarks at Mishkenot Sha'anamim in front of the Old City of Jerusalem, July 29, 2012.Jason Reed

Romney received words of encouragement on his visit to Poland on Monday from Lech Walesa, a former union leader and ex-Polish president, who said: "I wish you to be successful because this success is needed for the United States of course, but for Europe and the rest of the world too. Governor Romney, get your success. Be successful."

But Solidarity, the union led by Walesa in the 1980s that helped topple communism in Poland, distanced itself from Romney, who it said "supported attacks on trade unions and employees' rights."

OBAMA 'CONTEMPTUOUS'

Obama and Romney are running neck and neck in national polls ahead of the November 6 election, which has focused heavily on jobs.

Romney has criticized Obama's economic leadership and jumped on his recent "you didn't build that" comment to accuse him of being hostile to small businesses.

The Obama campaign says critics have taken that remark out of context and ignored Obama's broader point that public investment helped private businesses prosper.

Appearing at a television store in Arlington, Virginia, Gingrich, former speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, said Obama's comments in fact reflected his true approach.

"When you read the totality of that speech, Obama is so clearly contemptuous," Gingrich told reporters, who were the only attendees at the event. "The longer this argument goes on, the better it is for Romney."

The Romney campaign also released the latest in a series of videos featuring reactions to the comments by small-business founders. In the latest, an Ohio small-business owner says he was "ticked off" by Obama's comment.

Polls show that while Obama is well liked and seen as having done a good job on foreign policy, voters often trust Romney more to improve the economy and lower the unemployment rate of 8.2 percent.

"One of the most important questions in this whole campaign is how do you create jobs, and I think the president had sort of a Freudian slip suggesting people who build jobs and build businesses didn't do it," Gingrich said.

Obama visits New York on Monday night for a campaign fundraising event at a Manhattan hotel that guests will pay $40,000 to attend.

Additional reporting by Steve Holland in Jerusalem, Gabriel Debenedetti in Arlington, Margaret Chadbourn aboard Air Force One and Jihan Abdalla in Ramallah; Editing by Alistair Bell and Peter Cooney